The Fosters
by TurnYourBack
Summary: 25 years into the future, we discover how to convert a Sim into a living being. They are called Fosters, sub-humans, and are treated as such. But when Bethie becomes a Foster, she is given a unique job. She has to save her race from her very creators.
1. Chapter 1

The Fosters - Chapter 0 - Prologue

Life was particularily normal for our family the day the box came down from the sky.

My mother, Tia, was watering the flowers out back, and my grandpa was watching the game on our new flatscreen TV. My five brothers were playing basketball in the driveway, and I, Bethie Robbins, was sitting in my room, grounded for sneaking out with the neighbour boy. A seemingly normal, boring, two-week wait in the small box that was my room.

Unless you have friends to see.

I was pondering ways to get out the window by sundown without getting caught by the ever-present neighbour Mrs. MacKinnon when suddenly I felt a tug at the back of my neck. It was right between my shoulder blades, like when you get caught in a spider web and you try to break free. I shrugged it off and looked around, my grey eyes searching for a spider web. Then I looked up.

Curiosity killed the cat, right?

A blue box was floating above me, spinning, it's open flaps facing me. I just happened to glance in the mirror of my closet when I saw that I was not on the bed anymore, but sitting mid-air, being sucked into this cold, airless vortex.

I wish I could have screamed.

Instead, I gasped, turned and grappled for something to hold me down. I was too high up, so I shook my head franitcally, tears welling in my eyes, and tried to swim my way out of the vortex. Maybe I was being abducted by aliens. Maybe I was going to see Bella Goth! The wonder of that made me stop my struggle and I just let myself be sucked into the cubed vortex.

Bad mistake.

Pain shot through me, and I felt like I was being turned inside-out. I couldn't see anything but darkness, and my voice seemed to have vanished. Everything seemed to have vanished. It was like I was going through a portal to another world.

Like I was a ghost, in limbo forever.

Suddenly I heard a bing, and some sharp clicking followed by the sound of typing. A room popped up before me, with a podium and a bunch of buttons beside it. The podium was lit by floorlamps. Everything was of a blue hue, like the box was. Suddenly, in the middle of my wonderment, I was thrust into that lit space by an unseen force.

What did I do to deserve this?


	2. Chapter 2

The Fosters – Chapter 1 – Real World Frankenstein

I looked about the space frantically, but suddenly I froze into place, arms at my sides. A black frosted window, divided into sections, had appeared, and suddenly I saw the blurred shape of a face behind it, squinting at me and tapping the window.

I tried to back away, I really did, but it was too late. The window faded away and I was stuck in this paralyzed oblivion, a strange white pointer making my hair, clothes and skin change in rapid succession.

"There. What do you think we should name her once I upload her to the F.O.S.T.E.R., Sabrina?"

The voice seemed to echo in this timeless abyss, and I looked closer at the face. There were now two, a brown-haired woman with coffee-coloured eyes and a platinum blonde woman with eyes that resembled mine, which my Creator had called "Heaven, by Yumedust".

Some people didn't believe in Creators. They were the ones who came into the world without ever witnessing something called Creation, which was nearly identical to this, save for the fact that it was in a rather comfortable room that you could move about in. I had been through Creation with my entire family before we were placed in our house, but we weren't allowed to talk about it to the "BIG", or "Born-In-Game", which meant that I didn't talk about it at all. My family was sworn to secrecy, so we didn't even regard the topic as worth a breath of air.

Suddenly a sharp grinding sound brought me out of my reverie, and I saw that a black curtain had dropped over the window and I was free once again. But before I could even take a free breath of my own, I was forced to the ground by a harsh wind, and my eyes closed as I twisted and tumbled down what seemed to be a long tube. I didn't feel like I was myself anymore, more akin to a radio wave as I travelled through the pipes, and then there was light.

"She made it," a voice said breathlessly, and as I opened my new eyes for the first time, I saw what I presumed to be my captors in full light, one in a black hoodie with a rose and Celtic cross design over the heart, and another in a grey hoodie with a black grid print. I realised that these people, whoever they were, seemed much more real than what I was used to . . . the way the girl in the black tucked her hair behind her ear, and the way that the blonde girl leaned over the table at me, peering into my eyes in awestruck amazement.

I sat up. "What's going on? Who are you people, and why the heck –"

"She can speak English? Oh my God, Kelly, I only thought . . ."

"It's all part of the project. She's programmed in English, so she speaks it naturally. Now keep it down. I need to see if she's really alive."

"But she's breathing . . ."

The girl named Kelly shook her head. "I meant I'm going to check her vitals, and if her signals have taken over the brain or not."

The blonde woman shook her head. "So much for a basement project."

"Hannah, if you want to stay, then shut the hell up."

"Shutting."

I closed my eyes as Kelly ran the tests, and soon they were over, painless and for the most part what I presumed to be computer work. The realism was still to astounding to comprehend, and I had too many questions to ask this one harried individual, so I decided to drift until I was asked or prompted to get up.

No such command came.

"Um, is anybody going to let me up?"

I opened my eyes to find the two staring at me. "Just get up on your own. It's in your programming."

Slowly swinging my legs over the edge of the table, I let my feet hit the floor, and I realised that I wasn't wearing my usual green and white summerdress, but instead a pair of jeans and a black baggy t-shirt that read "MUSE" in large white print over the front. Strange white objects like mittens covered my feet, but they weren't uncomfortable at all, just rather unusual.

"There. So how do you feel?"

I looked at Kelly. "Um, fine. What happened?"

Kelly beamed at me and got up. "You're a Foster, silly. A Freely Optimised Simulated Transmutated Earthbound Robot."

I stared at her in amazement. "A . . . A _robot?!_"

She shrugged. "Well, you _were_ created in a computer. Your entire life up until now has been under my control in a game called _The Sims 2._ Your body was that of a coma victim, just transformed through surgeries to make you more comfortable. She was taken off of life support by her parents after ten years of waiting for her to come out of her vegetative state, and she was taken here, to the Institute of Genetic Sciences, because her body could not be laid to waste. She was perfect except for her brain, so we took her body and put you in it. You are a perfect model of us in digital format, with a few limitations, and this game was abandoned years ago until I found it and decided to try it out again. Nobody would contest putting something so human into something so full of potential."

I nodded, squinting at her. "One more question?"

"Yes?"

"What's a coma?"


End file.
